781
Richard Steele goes to Bath for his health, and is cured of more ailments than he had ever had in his life.
Eighteenth-century Bath was a fashionable spa city to which the Quality would retire for ‘the cure’. However, the health-giving waters were seemingly not enough by themselves, and doctors clustered round with all the medical treatments visitors could possibly want or need — plus a good many more.
Picture: By Adrian Pingstone, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted January 30 2019
782
Joseph Addison complains that the famous Cries of London are a lot of fuss about nothing.
‘The Cries of London’, the various musical and not-so-musical calls of street vendors in Queen Anne’s capital, were widely regarded with affection and pride. But the endless drumming of tins and kettles left Joseph Addison’s nerves raw, and the medley of slogans and doggerel verses was if anything worse.
Picture: By Paul Sandby (1731-1809), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted January 29 2019
783
A Portuguese merchant assesses Great Britain’s market under the Hanoverians.
Manoel Gonzales tells us that he was a native of Lisbon, educated by the Jesuits. His mother pulled him from the school on suspicion that the priests were after his inheritance, so Manoel set himself to expand his father’s business instead. On April 23rd, 1730 – St George’s Day, as he noted — Gonzales set out for Falmouth, intending to reconnoitre his chosen market.
Picture: © Rob Farrow, Geograph. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
Posted January 28 2019
784
Lord Macaulay describes the toils of a typical country gentleman visiting London in the time of Charles II.
Macaulay’s influential history of England, which first appeared in 1848, was a paean to Progress and especially to progress in Britain. By his day, London was truly England’s capital, a cosmopolitan railway hub; back in the 1660s, however, it was an island entire of itself, and any rural squire who struggled in over the dirty and rutted roads found himself in a foreign land.
Picture: By Ferdinand van Kessel (1648-1696), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted January 26 2019
785
William Shakespeare immortalised his lover in verse, as if holding back for ever the ravages of Time.
Without question, William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 is one of the best known and most beloved poems in the English language. William immortalises his lover in verse, saying that though beauty must pass away all too soon, she and her loveliness will live on in his lines as long as there are men to read them.
Picture: © Bob Harvey, Geograph. Licence: CC-BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
Posted January 24 2019
786
When Raffles Haw comes to sleepy Tamfield, his breathtaking generosity starts turning heads at once, and one belongs to Laura McIntyre.
The first visit of the McIntyres’ new neighbour, free-spending, blue-sky-thinking Raffles Haw, has impressed Laura deeply. He has been upstairs to her brother’s studio and bought two paintings, and even offered to move an unsightly hill for her convenience. Laura’s fiancé Hector, away at sea, is quite forgotten.
Picture: © Vadim Smalkov, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.. Source.
Posted January 20 2019